AWS Thinkbox Discussion Forums

Aqsis not listed on Deadline's web pages

I know you can’t list and support every renderer out there but I was curious if there was any reason that Aqsis isn’t listed on the web page.



I’ve been using Deadline with Aqsis for a couple of projects now without any major problems. I had to modify the basicRib params and dlinit files but other than that it’s worked well.



I had to add the following to the basicRib.params



[Aqsis_Executable]

Type=filename

Default=c:\program files\aqsis\bin\aqsis.exe

Description=The path to the Aqsis executable used for rendering. Leave blank to ignore.



and these linse to the dlinit file.



Aqsis_Executable=C:\Program Files\Aqsis\bin\aqsis.exe

Aqsis_ConstArgs=



The only 2 problems I have run into with Aqsis and Deadline is that jobs do not use 2 processes even when “Limit tasks to number of CPU’s” is checked. While Deadline does report that my slaves have 2 cpu’s I have to manually set the number of tasks to 2 in order to get Deadline to spawn 2 tasks with Aqsis. I’m not sure if this is a Deadline or Aqsis issue really.

The other problem is I haven’t been able to get the percentage done on tasks to report back properly even when I change the constArgs to be --progress I just get alot of chatter in the slave’s dialog boxes. I’m not sure why this is a problem as according to the developers Aqsis’s progress reporting is compatible with PRman’s. But I don’t know much about regular expressions so it’s a bit beyond my reach to fix this.





David

Hi David,



We haven’t listed Aqsis simply because we haven’t tested it yet. :slight_smile:



However, since you have been successful using it with Deadline, we’ll

add it to our list of supported renderers, and we’ll include the code

you have provided with future versions of Deadline so that others can

use it as well (with your permission of course). Let us know if this is ok!



The “Limit tasks to number of CPU’s” check box means that a dual

processor machine (for example) won’t pick up more than two tasks,

regardless of what you have the concurrent tasks set to. You still have

to set concurrent tasks to 2 if you want dual processor machines to pick

up 2 tasks. Perhaps we can add an option to specify the number of

concurrent tasks to render with in the submission dialog.



For the progress percentage, can you post or send us an example of the

output from the slave log? We could take a look at it and try to figure

out the appropriate regular expression to use to report the progress

properly.



Kind regards,

  • Ryan

You’re welcome to distribute the changes that I mentioned in my email.



Aqsis has a few different progress reporting options.



-progress Print progress information

-Progress Print prman-compatible progress information (ignores -progressformat)

-progressformat=string printf-style format string for -progress



Below is the output to the log file for the first 2.



-progress

0: INFO: Executable: “C:\Program Files\Aqsis\bin\aqsis.exe”

0: INFO: Arguments: “-progress “C:\DOCUME~1\pleiades\LOCALS~1\Temp\rollingsun.0000.rib””

0: INFO: StartupDir: “C:\DOCUME~1\pleiades\LOCALS~1\Temp”

0: INFO: UseJobObject: true

0: INFO: HideDosWindow: true

0: STDOUT: Frame (0) 0.00% complete [ 0 secs / 0 left ]

0: STDOUT: Frame (0) 0.01% complete [ 35 secs / 446880 left ]

0: STDOUT: Frame (0) 0.02% complete [ 35 secs / 223422 left ]

0: STDOUT: Frame (0) 0.02% complete [ 35 secs / 148936 left ]

0: STDOUT: Frame (0) 0.03% complete [ 35 secs / 111693 left ]

0: STDOUT: Frame (0) 0.04% complete [ 35 secs / 89348 left ]

0: STDOUT: Frame (0) 0.05% complete [ 35 secs / 74450 left ]

0: STDOUT: Frame (0) 0.05% complete [ 35 secs / 63810 left ]

0: STDOUT: Frame (0) 0.06% complete [ 35 secs / 55829 left ] …



-Progress



0: INFO: Executable: “C:\Program Files\Aqsis\bin\aqsis.exe”

0: INFO: Arguments: “-Progress “C:\DOCUME~1\pleiades\LOCALS~1\Temp\rollingsun.0000.rib””

0: INFO: StartupDir: “C:\DOCUME~1\pleiades\LOCALS~1\Temp”

0: INFO: UseJobObject: true

0: INFO: HideDosWindow: true

---- December 19 2005 – 05:43 PM ----

0: STDOUT: R90000 1.00%

0: STDOUT: R90000 2.00%

0: STDOUT: R90000 3.00%

0: STDOUT: R90000 4.00%

0: STDOUT: R90000 5.00%

0: STDOUT: R90000 6.00%

0: STDOUT: R90000 7.00%

0: STDOUT: R90000 8.00%

0: STDOUT: R90000 9.00% …



hope this helps.





David

Hi David,



Thanks for the info. Try using the -Progress argument with this regex

pair. Just add the following to the dlinit file:



OutputRegEx2=.* ([0-9]+.[0-9]+)%.*

OutputRule2=SetProgress( GetRegExMatch( 1 ) );



Note that I’m assuming that OutputRegex0 and OutputRegex1 have already

been defined in the dlinit file. If not, you can adjust the number

accordingly.



Let us know if this works.



Kind regards,

  • Ryan

Thanks Ryan that did the trick. I added SuppressThisLine(); to the end of the 2nd line so that I don’t clog my slaves with extremely large log files.



So my entry for this Regular Expression rule looks like this.



OutputRegEx2=.* ([0-9]+.[0-9]+)%.*

OutputRule2=SetProgress( GetRegExMatch( 1 ) ); SuppressThisLine();





David

That’s great to hear! We’ll be sure to include Aqsis support in the next

release of Deadline. Thanks for your help!


  • Ryan
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